Spent Friday evening getting everything ready and putting my bike in the car for an early start on Sat morning, the plan was to get up at 5:10 so that I would have plenty of time to get ready and drive the 1:30 down to the race and would have plenty of time to relax when I got there and set up my stuff in transition. Well that was the plan. Set my alarm to go for5:10then bed. Couldn’t get to sleep that night, insomnia was being a right pain, looked at the clock and it said 3:00, should have got up then, but managed to fall asleep, next thing I know looked at the clock and it was 6:40……. @*$;, O @*$;, O @*$;. Jumped out of bed get tri kit on and out the house, jumped straight in the car and set off, all the way down thinking o damn I’m going to miss the start. Luckily I popped in to Tescos the night before and bought some croissants and apples, so had breakfast on the move. Luckily traffic was light, so managed to get there in about 50 mins, just before they shut transition and when the compulsory race briefing was going on, I could just about hear one or two words he was saying over the PA. Jumped out the car, got bike out, put the wheel on (an F1 team would have been impressed with how quick the wheel went on, even remembered to tighten the breaks J), and grabbed my transition box and ran over to set up transition, I had about 5 minutes to pump my tyre up and get sorted, still wearing jeans so and a hoodie, so it all went in the box, all in all my transition area was a mess but I had managed to get there for the start so was happy, I left transition in a mess as the swim was about to start got my wettie on and headed over to the start.

This was my first OW race and mass start, so had no expectation for the swim and just wanted to do it. I started mid pack on the inside of the field and was surprised at how few people there were on the inside, the course was 2 laps, the swim went without incident, spent the whole time thinking about what I had to do in T1, having not set anything up properly.

First lap was12:39second14:13so total 26:52. Time was way faster than I expected and faster than I had done in the pool before.

T1 –6:13

After a short run up from the swim, got out of the wettie easy enough, then the hard part started, finding everything I needed for the bike, my transition box was a mess, with 3 pairs of footwear in, jeans, a t-shirt, a hoodie, a track pump, finding my gloves etc took a few minutes, eventually managed to get sorted and ran out of T1 in – 6:13. I knew this was slow, looking at the number of bikes still racked I came into T1 with 2 thirds of the bikes still racked and left with less than 1 third racked.

I had a bit of time to make up after T1, I had driven the bike course before so knew that the first 5/6 miles was almost all up hill before flattening out for 10 miles and then 5 miles of mainly down hill. The hills went great, I managed to catch a lot of people on he hills, all the time staying seated too, after the hills started to feel a little low on energy, but had put a few jaffer cakes and a welsh cake in the tri bag, so got those down me and started to feel good again. Pushed on a bit more on the flat, still over taking a lot of people. Slowed down on one of the ascents to check that another rider was ok after he was wobbling a little on the climb and spewing a lot, he said that he was fine and to carry on. Luckily it was a beautiful day and there was no wind, it would have been a nightmare of a course if there was any wind because it was so open.

T2 – 1:54

Into T2 racked bike, everything out of transition box, find trainers, everything back into transition box and out.

Run – 46:28.7:41per mile

For some reason I thought that the run would be flat, so pushed a little harder on the bike, how wrong could I be!! The run was half a mile along the sand on the beech before ¾ of a mile up and ¾ of a mile down to finish one loop, and then do the same again. To get down to the hard sand on the beech you had to run through soft sand which was quite draining and slowed the pace down quite a bit, but I was feeling strong and managed to push a bit on the harder sand, the up hill on the first lap went well, still overtaking a lot of people, but I got over taken by one runner and that annoyed me a bit, but I couldn’t keep up with him so let him go. By the end of the first lap, my achilles was starting to flare, and there was a bit of pain with every stride, so I eased up on the pace quite a bit for the second lap, the pain got better but with my A race in 2 weeks I kept an easy pace for the rest of the run.

But I did manage my 19 mile training run and in under 4 hrs as well so I'm a very happy bear today. I setup my own little aid station at the local bus stop which I passed 4 times which was great something to really break the route up and look forwards to. Must live in a nice area as no one pinched my bag of goodies either.

Hey bbt..that's a really good times despite the , ahem, late start..we've all done it. I once got to a race late got out of the car ran to the start and then just carried on running as just as the race had just started..nowim ridiculously early for races as I can't stand the panic!

FFS, Bear... Outlaw is significantly more than half a year away! Chill your big furry paws. 2012 sprint times won't be worth a jar of honey by the time you roll into Nottingham next summer. Turn the majority of those 4-hour runs into 4-hour rides and you'll be fine .

I love that the first element of your winter bike training programme has been to pimp your ride with a snazzy paint job. First things first, n all that !

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